


The Sinners' Gospel

by IntoTheRiverStyx



Series: Requests/challenges/etc [15]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Angst, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Off-screen Rape, Post-Canon, Trauma, on-screen suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-02-23 00:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23903068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IntoTheRiverStyx/pseuds/IntoTheRiverStyx
Relationships: Bedivere/Kay (Arthurian), Galehaut/Lancelot du Lac, Guinevere/Arthur Pendragon, Lancelot du Lac/Arthur Pendragon
Series: Requests/challenges/etc [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1673452
Comments: 7
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

**I**

He was dead, he knew on an intrinsic level, but this was not what he had expected death to feel like, to look like.

_Could he still feel? Or was feeling a distant memory, destined only to fade the longer he was away from life itself?_

He wandered forward from the spot he'd become aware of himself – his soul – feet rising and falling as he willed them to do so.

“You're here,” a familiar voice said to him.

“Gawain?” Lancelot blanched, “Gawain, what are you doing here?”

“Nothing you're going to like,” Gawain grimaced.

“Where am I?” Lancelot asked, “Where are we?”

“Somewhere between Heaven, Hell, and Earth,” Gawain shrugged as he came into view, “Walk with me.”

“Why do we need to walk?” Lancelot asked, “We're dead." Lancelot made a face and a pained noise, but as Gawain started walking, he felt compelled to follow.

“You really, really aren't going to like this,” Gawain tried again to warn him.

“I didn't like a lot of things in life,” Lancelot managed to say, “Why should I expect death to be any different?”

Gawain stopped to look back and grimace, knowing what Lancelot had in store for him.

**II**

It was as if he was watching something unfold through the clearest glass he had ever seen. He could hear, see, and almost feel everything as if he were there, but he could not interact, could not move forward, could do nothing but stand and watch.

“What is this?” Lancelot asked.

“I'm sorry,” Gawain had not once apologized in life – in general, but especially to Lancelot, “but you have to watch before we can move forward.”

_A younger man held a bundle of deep blue blanket to his chest as tears streamed down his eyes. He was stumbling towards a lake as if each step pained him. Despite the pristine, near-royal look to the blankets, the man was dressed in tattered clothes, edges burnt and most of his figure covered in soot and ash and mud._

_“I'm so sorry,” he whispered to the bundle, “I am so, so sorry. Please, Lady, take him. Take him from me.”_

_He set the bundle down on the lake's surface, a single, strangled cry as if from an infant escaping the bundle as it sank._

“Oh my God,” Lancelot breathed, “Was that...was that my father?”

Gawain only flinched.

_Under the lake's surface, the bundle was taken into the arms of a water witch._

_“Oh my poor child,” she cooed, “You'll be safe now.”_

_She took the child as her own in that moment, sparing him death, the love behind his father's plea pure, if misguided._

_“You have a Destiny I cannot save you from,” she hummed as she looked for something to feed him, “I do not know if it was a mercy or a curse, ensuring you lived.”_

“He didn't want me,” Lancelot's voice was a broken thing, “He thought drowning me was better than trying to...” Lancelot fell to his knees, head in his hands, and wept. Gawain stood there, waiting.

Lancelot thought of Mordred, of all those babies whose only crime was being born when the Summer's feasts began, of how unwanted the man he'd wound up inadvertently giving the advantage to in his war against Arthur, and wondered how he felt, how Mordred even survived that sort of soul wound.

Why had he not said something? Why did he not try to change Arthur's mind? Why had he not tried to save families whose numbers went beyond counting 

“You need to get up,” Gawain told him.

“You were right,” Lancelot said as he rose to his feet, tears still streaming down his face, “I hate this.”

**III**

_It was his sixteenth founding day when his adoptive mother – the only parent he'd ever known – told him he was old enough to venture out into the world._

_This world, this land and air and **different** water, was almost too much for him, too much for his inexperienced senses._

_“This is for you,” his mother told him as she handed him a sword foraged from the waters he was raised in, “You will do great things, my boy.”_

_“What am I to do?” he asked between gulps of air, “I want to go home.”_

_“And you will find home,” she assured him, “Think of all the times growing up you said you wanted to see the world and let them fuel you.”_

_“I was wrong,” Lancelot turned to cling to her as if still a small child, “I hate the outside and want to go back.”_

_“Oh my sweet boy,” she murmured, “Destiny waits for no one.”_

“I never found home,” Lancelot hadn't stopped crying after he learned his birth father had tried to drown him as a mercy, “Not in the way I called the lake home.”

“No one finds home,” Gawain scoffed, “Approximations, but home is a memory that warps as we see the world until it becomes something we seek in everyone we meet. We find a lot of balms, but never home as we knew when we were children.”

**IV**

_He wandered, mostly, foraging for food while trying to remember what his mother had taught him would and would not kill him, sometimes finding a stranger capable of mercy who gave him food or board for a night or two._

_He was told often he looked too young to wield a sword like his, that he had the eyes of a child despite having the face of a man. He did not know what they meant, but these did not seem like kind words._

_“Come with me,” a stranger told him, “you have a destiny to fulfill.”_

“Oh no,” Lancelot could not get his breath above a whisper, “No, not this day, please.”

Beside him, Gawain said nothing.

_Lancelot slaughtered guard after guard, their death screams never reaching his ears as he focused on using the sword his mother gave him, letting the thing guide him more than he directed it. Sure, he had the physical strength and the know-how in theory, but practice – practice where the penalty for a slip-up was more than a bit steep – practice he lacked._

_His weapon seemed to have a mind of its own, possessing him body and soul so hat he fought like a seasoned veteran rather than a frightened child who had not yet grown into his manhood._

“Wow,” Gawain said despite his best attempts to remain a neutral observer..

“It was,” Lancelot was trembling but the tears had stopped, “I did that.”

“Did you not know?” Gawain asked, “What you did, I mean?”

Lancelot shook his head. “It was like I was possessed,” Lancelot confessed, “I did not think, did not consider the lives I was taking. It was like...like there was something driving me deeper and deeper into the castle.”

“And was there?” Gawain couldn't help but ask another question.

Lancelot flinched and turned his attention back to the unfolding scene rather than answer.

“That bad, then,” Gawain said under his breath.

_Lancelot was in the castle's catacombs, out of breath and covered in blood splatters. His knuckles were open and bleeding, a hit from another sword exposing them near to the bone._

_And yet, it was the shock of seeing the open, empty tomb in the very back of the catacombs that had him in shock._

_There was a lineage etched into the headstone that ended with a name be **knew**._

_The took a deep, unsteady breath and inhaled so much dirt and what was probably bone dust and started coughing._

_It was, he knew on a level deeper than reason itself, that the name at the end of the lineage was his._

_He was a King, his father and mother dead, their castle not abandoned but taken over, the bloodline forced out._

_And yet, despite all odds, he had survived. He was here, here to reclaim the castle of his family._

_He was home, yet he found it empty._

_He left orders to restore the castle to its former glory and kept searching for something that settled even deeper into his soul._

**V**

_He was in Camelot, kneeling in front of the Queen whose husband he'd pledged himself to. He would serve this King, this man, with his life._

_King Arthur had taken him in when he first arrived, a gesture caught between pity and curiosity. He then put him through every test Camelot and her marshals had to offer, found Lancelot to be both perfect and undefeatable._

_King Arthur had asked Lancelot – asked him – to become his Champion, the young King in need of someone with a pure heart and skill beyond his years to act as his final line of defense. And, it seemed, he'd found what he was looking for in Lancelot._

_Lancelot, thankful to have found someone rather than something that settled into his soul, agreed without hesitation._

“Would that that lasted,” Lancelot's voice was the type of empty only regret deeper than death could grant.

_He arose as Sir Lancelot, King's Champion and Camelot's shining example of what a Knight was expected to aspire to. If one listen to their King, it seemed he believe that the Heavens themselves had given him Lancelot._

_Lancelot was so, so sure he'd found it, that Home was not a place, but with Arthur._

**VI**  


_“You have one horse between you,” the man on the cart pointed out as he rode alongside them, “You could get where ever it is you're going faster if one of you rides in the cart and the other on the horse.”_

_“No, thank you,” Lancelot had a death grip on Gawain's waist, “good sir,” he added for good measure, but it came across as snippy._

_“If you're sure,” the man on the cart shrugged, before urging his donkey to trot on faster._

“That whole trip was a disaster,” Gawain recalled, finding himself drawn into Lancelot's narrative that was being woven in front of them.

“I was so sure the cart was below me,” Lancelot huffed, “It cost us so much.”

Gawain made a discontented noise.

_In the next town, a familiar cart was resting outside the hybrid tavern-inn. Lancelot swore, stringing combinations together that made Gawain flush with embarrassment._

“I had no idea those words could go together,” Gawain told him.

“Neither did I,” Lancelot admitted.

“I didn't even know you cursed,” Gawain raised an eyebrow.

“Only when I've inventing slurs,” Lancelot managed some sarcasm.

He watched – forced himself to watch – as his pride cost himself something that could never be replaced: time.

 **VII**  


_It was easier than he'd expected, scaling the castle wall and squeezing through the broken window bars into the room he'd seen Sir Kay's unmistakable fiery red hair while he and Gawain were scouting the castle where both Sir Kay and Queen Guinevere were being held hostage._

_He knew he had scraped himself getting in and startled Kay so badly the slightly older Knight had nearly sounded an alarm._

_“Shut it,” Lancelot hissed, “You're being rescued.”_

_“Lance?” Guinevere was the first of the two of them to recover from the shock of being awoken in the middle of the night._

_“Yes,” Lancelot whispered, “Sir Gawain is on the ground, a safe distance but ready to run the instant we get to the ground.”_

_“We have a small problem,” the Queen said. It was too dark to see anyone, but Lancelot had a feeling she was looking at Kay._

_“So what other options do we have?” Lancelot asked._

_“In the morning,” Guinevere said quietly, “they will come to drop us our meals. Kay is injured and lacking most of his strength, so they will not be expecting a Knight who may be able to overpower them and take their keys.”_

_Lancelot realized, then, that he'd have to repeat the affair of slaughtering everyone who stood in his path._

_“Right,” Lancelot did his best not to hesitate. In his agreement._

“And I did,” Lancelot closed his eyes in hopes of avoiding watching the rest of it, “I killed each and every one of them I came across. You met me partway and escorted Sir Kay and the Queen to safety.”

“And I couldn't turn around in time to help you,” there was genuine remorse in Gawain's voice, a tone he had not allowed himself to afford in life.

“They were more important,” Lancelot was quick to say, “They were always more important than I was.”

 **VIII**  


_He had stayed back to cover for Gawain's escape, to ensure the Queen and Sir Kay could get to safety despite the latter's injuries._

_And oh, what it had cost him._

_He lay on the cold floor two cells away from the one he'd ambushed the guard from, the broken window having been discovered before he was throwing into the cell. He hurt in ways he did not know he could hurt, his sword taken and clothes stripped from him to make sure he was not hiding anything that could be used as a weapon._

_He shivered despite his best efforts as he tried to get across the floor to the single cot the room offered. He had landed on his side and was unable to roll over, so moving to the cot involved slow, incremental, painful movements._

_“Mom,” he wept as he realized he was not getting up and into the cot any time soon, “Mom I am so sorry. I lost the sword. I failed. I'm going to die here.” He curled around himself, resigned to the fact he was going to die naked and alone in a prison cell._

Gawain put his hand on Lancelot's back, hoping the pressure was reassuring as Lancelot began to weep again.

**IX**

_It happened gradually for years, something so incremental Lancelot was able to call it loyalty until it happened all at once._

_It was love._

_He had fallen in love with the very person he had sworn to protect. The fear this would take away his objectivity, impair his ability to **do his job** flooded his senses, kept him from sleeping nights on end, only sheer exhaustion affording him anything resembling sleep. _

_He was able to remain as close to normal as possible, to not let anyone even have a hint of the fact his heart was tearing itself to shreds. That he'd found home and made the mistake in falling love with it._

_At nights, on the rare nights he was able to be truly alone, when his King and Queen sought privacy, he cried himself to sleep, wishing it was him who was desired._

“It was never Guinevere, was it?” Gawain almost seemed apprehensive in his asking.

Lancelot fell to his knees and wept once more.

**X**

_He was at war._

_This was not a new thing, not by a long shot, but this was the first war he'd agreed to go as his King's Black Knight – no name, not insignia, just cold, black armor that made him stand out on the field and struck terror into the hearts of those who faced him._

_His description, he knew, was spoken of in whispers, rumors taking a life of their own. Arthur encouraged the rumors' propagation while he told people his Champion was overseas._

_It was only in Arthur's tent that Lancelot was allowed to shed his armor, his King helping him with the straps and other mechanisms, this reversal of roles driving Lancelot to a madness he could not contain, only promise himself to sublimate it into his fighting the next time he took up his sword._

_“A meeting,” Arthur woke him up one morning before the sun had risen, “The King whose armies stand in opposition to us,” and God Above did that **us** do things to Lancelot, “wished a meeting.”_

_“And I need my armor on, don't I?” Lancelot had not yet opened his eyes._

_“You do,” Arthur told him, “He, very specifically, is impressed with the fighting skills of our Black Knight and wishes to meet him.”_

_“He's willing to end a war because he's impressed?” Lancelot was sure he had misheard and was ready and willing to blame the fact he was still waking up._

_“Apparently,” Arthur sighed, “If this works I'm having a display of your skill at the beginning of every war to see if it has the same result.”_

_Lancelot managed a small, disbelieving laugh as he hauled himself to his feet._

“The weird thing is I can feel everything you were feeling as we go through this one,” Gawain said, “I couldn't with the others, but this one. This one's different.”

“It was the first time I let my heart betray me,” Lancelot said, words stiff and every single one of his features drawn tight.

He was beautiful.

He was so, so painful beautiful that Lancelot's heart began to mend itself on sight, this King who would see his fellow Knights and other warriors dead, this King who stood in opposition to his own.

Lancelot felt his weighted stare, felt it as if it could see past his armor, see into whatever was left of his soul after all he'd been through.

The King-in-Opposition was the largest man Lancelot had ever seen in every direction, his head held with a sense of well-earned pride.

“Galehaut,” Arthur used the King-in-Opposition's first name only.

“Arthur,” Galehaut replied and, oh, Lancelot could feel the rumble in the other man's voice deep within his own chest.

There was an overly-formal discussion that sounded like a verbal dance between the Kings, Galehaut's marshal and Arthur's Sir Kay in attendance as witnesses while Lancelot tried not to pass out from standing still in his armor for so long.

“And so it is done,” Kay's voice sounded like he'd swallowed gravel before the meeting and Lancelot knew the sensechal was hung over, “King Galehaut agrees to withdraw his troops from Camelot's land, and to leave the borders undisturbed.”

“In exchange for the secrets he can pry from your Black Knight,” Galehaut's marshal said.

And, really, Lancelot wished he had been paying better attention to the proceedings.

“He **sold** you?” Gawain squawked.

“He trusted me not to break,” Lancelot still felt the need to defend his King despite everything.

“Wish I knew how to get the level of love and loyalty Arthur had from you,” Gawain could not stop the words as they happened.

“No,” Lancelot's laugh was a defeated thing, “You really, really do not.”

**XI**

_It had been one week since Lancelot began to lead Galehaut back to his castle, back to Joyous Garde, keeping his armor on the entire way, only removing his helmet enough to eat and drink, only removing other parts enough to relieve himself in the dead of night._

_“You keep your secrets close,” Galehaut tried to start a conversation, and failed._

_In truth, Lancelot had not been back to the castle since he'd discovered who he really was, since he learned he had a name besides his adoptive mother's fond **my child** and **boy**. He had no idea the state it was in, or if it would even be accessible. He would not, he hoped have to slaughter a whole host of occupants again._

_Lancelot was greeted by a small group of wary gate guards until he finally, finally took off his helmet._

_“Ah, my King,” one of them bowed and Lancelot tried to hide his startled reaction that he was recognized, tried to hide the fact he had genuinely forgotten he was, in fact, a King himself._

_“We will be staying for a while,” Lancelot was unsure how sure of himself he sounded._

_“We will have a feast readied for your return,” another guard bowed and trotted off at a pace that could not be called walking._

_“Excellent,” it felt like a safe response, “See our horses are well cared for,” Lancelot said to no one in particular as he dismounted._

“Would you have liked to be a King?” Gawain asked.

“Did you?” Lancelot knew the question was a low blow, that Gawain had only been the King of Orkney on technicalities, that one of Arthur's war had killed his father and one of his own siblings had slaughtered their mother, but Lancelot did not want to think about how his life would have been different had he been King instead of Champion.

Would he have aligned himself with Camelot, with Arthur? Or would he, like so many other Kings and Lords whose lands were far enough away from Camelot that they could not see reason to align themselves with the enigmatic Boy King, have tried to wage war against him?

He did not know.

He did not want to know.

_“Please, let me help you,” Galehaut said as Lancelot tried to remove his armor on his own. They'd made it to a slightly more private place than the castle entrance, but no where near Lancelot's rooms. Lancelot nearly flinched away, but remembered the faith in his fortitude Arthur had placed squarely on his shoulders and froze instead._

_“You are kind,” Lancelot managed._

_“It is only right,” Galehaut's hands were deft, making quick work of the straps. Lancelot nearly let the first piece crash to the floor, the speed taking him by surprise, “your smith is clearly an expert.”_

_“Only the finest,” Lancelot repeated what Arthur said to each Knight as he welcomed them into the fold._

_“For a Knight such as yourself, the finest would seem to be not good enough for you,” Galehaut's awe was unguarded, “Please, let me show you.” There was a reverence in Galehaut's voice, and in it he heard the awe and admiration he had long wished to laud unto Arthur._

_Lancelot let Galehaut show him, each piece of armor removed offering Galehaut more to admire, more to lavish, more to laud, more to praise. Lancelot, high on the closeness and wonder, gave himself body and soul to Galehaut._

“Goddamn,” Gawain whistled. Lancelot startled and elbowed Gawain in the solar plexus. Gawain doubled over.

“How does that hurt when we're dead?” Lancelot asked.

“Were that death was as simple as we'd thought,” Gawain coughed, “Your first time was in the middle of your castle floor?”

“Wasn't yours in a chapel?” Lancelot was still watching the scene unfold.

“Oh trust me,” Gawain's laugh lacked its usual humor, “the Green Chapel was very green, but it wasn't a chapel.”

Lancelot thought it wise not to ask any more follow-up questions lest he wind up hearing **everything** about the Green Chapel.


	2. Chapter 2

**XII**

_They traveled back to Camelot slowly, Galehaut easily distracted and Lancelot afraid the return to the place he called home would break the spell that seemed to have been woven between the no-longer-opposing-King and himself. He was been Galehaut's equal, not his lesser, and Galehaut had been more than keen to show Lancelot what powers he held in his veins he left untapped for Arthur's sake._

_“What will it mean,” Galehaut finally asked one evening, “for you to return to being Champion?”_

_“It means I will be spending much of my time at Arthur's side,” Lancelot told him, “both in and out of court.”_

_“Hmm,” Gaehaul hummed as he struck the flint in the general direction of the dried twigs they were using as kindling, “that will be a shame, but you seem so wed to duty that another could not compete.”_

_Galehaut had no idea how right he was. Still, Lancelot had fallen in love with the way Galehaut had been treating him, if not with the man himself. He would try to keep that, even if it meant forgoing the entire truth._

_They were welcomed at the gates, Lancelot as a hero and Galehaut as an ally. Galehaut was quick to swear his loyalty to Arthur, swear his lands and resources to the King, so impressed with his Champion that he was willing to give everything he had, everything he'd been, to stay by Lancelot's side._

_And, really, Lancelot knew he would never get this type of devotion, this type of love, again, and so he let whatever he felt for Arthur learn how to redirect itself into whatever seeds were being sewn between himself and Galehaut._

“That's a type of love,” Gawain said.

“It's fucked up,” Lancelot's three words held to much self-loathing. Gawain knew there were no comforts to be offered, not now, not over this, whatever this would become as Lancelot's story dragged on before their eyes.

_They were in Arthur's private chambers, celebrating the new alliance, just Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Galehaut, Kay, Bedivere, and Gawain. It was as things often were in times of peace, during long nights of words only they would hear, and even then only once. Galehaut fit in the circle perfectly, the wine flowing and the laughter abundant._

_“I am thankful your journey went well,” Arthur said as he clapped Lancelot on the shoulder and offered him a small, private smile that made Lancelot's traitorous heart do things he wished it would grant him the mercy of forgetting how to do._

_“As am I,” Lancelot did not return the gesture, did not know if he was supposed to return the gesture, feared returning the small gesture of affection would betray him to both his King and his lover. This was a new thing, any physical affection, and it froze Lancelot's mind and body in time. Arthur's smile vanished as Arthur withdrew from Lancelot._

_“So I hear this one is landed,” Kay kicked Lancelot's shin with the toe of his riding boot, always quick to read the room and quicker to defuse a thing before any one else knew the fuse had even been lit. For all his reputation as a cruel man, there was something less frightening lying under the facade._

_“He-” Galehaut started, clearly ready to go into some sort of story or poetic appraisal._

_“-has been trying to get me to talk about my lands for years,” Lancelot cut him off. Galehaut chuckled but stopped talking. Instead, he leaned over with one arm behind Lancelot, their shoulders touching. It was a subtle thing, but to Lancelot it was a grand gesture, one of affection and claim alike._

_“I am glad to have you back,” Guinevere said fondly, “It is not the same without you.”_

_Lancelot flushed at the praise and ducked his head in an attempt to hide the color rising in his cheeks. In doing so, he missed the jealousy that flashed across both Arthur and Galehaut's eyes, a dangerous thing in one King, but in two it was a death sentence for one of them._

“Four Kings in one room,” Lancelot muttered, “and we thought that was a good idea.”

“I wasn't King yet,” Gawain pointed out.

Lancelot made a discontented noise.

_They were back in Lancelot's room, Lancelot sprawled over Galehaut as Galehaut traced mindless patterns over Lancelot's back, ignoring the network of scars he'd earned in his admittedly short lifetime._

_“They seem nice,” Galehaut finally said something._

_“They are my life,” Lancelot said, “All I have known since I have come of age, was them.”_

_“What about your lands?” Galehaut's pattern tracing paused in his confusion._

_Lancelot, whether from the wine or the exhaustion or the constant near-intoxicated feeling he got when he and Galehaut were skin-to-skin, told Galehaut everything, from being raised under the lake to how he was cast out with his sword and not much else on his sixteenth founding day. He was a mess by the end of it, the entire story never having left the safety of his mind before._

_He waited for Galehaut to tell him he was mad, to leave, to yell, but those things never came. Instead, Galehaut simply whispered, “I knew you were unique.”_

“I did not expect to feel jealousy in death,” Gawain grimaced at his own words.

“Nor did I,” Lancelot said through clenched teeth, “least of all of myself.”

Gawain touched Lancelot on the elbow gently, but did not remove his hand. Lancelot looked to Gawain, a reluctant gesture.

“Come,” Gawain told him, “I fear we have much, much more to go through.”

**XIII**

_Lancelot hoped he never grew tired of war. The thrill of it, the feeling of being unconquerable, the chance to finally, finally show what he was capable of beyond guarding a King who never seemed to have any attempts on his life._

_Ambushes during a solo patrol of the borders, however, he could do without._

_He'd managed the first three easy enough, even with his horse wounded and flailing on its side, but the arrow that grazed his thigh was going to be a problem._

_“Shit,” he hissed, down on one knee, sword swinging wildly. The edges of his vision began to blur, sword suddenly impossibly heavy._

_He was, the thought not for the first time, going to die alone._

“You never told us what happened,” Gawain's commentary was quiet.

“It got worse,” Lancelot managed to sound assuring despite the sentiment.

_The last thing he was was a woman shrouded in black lace, a mourner, but for who? Who mourns at the end of a pack of highway robbers? His consciousness faded before he could find out, but he was sure he heard a soft, “Oh, it's you,” before the world became nothing to him._

“I'm glad that's not actually the last thing you heard before death,” Gawain noted.

“Is it possibly to die twice?” Lancelot glared at him, “Asking for a friend.”

“I am so glad you consider me a friend,” Gawain said with a grin that showed too many teeth, “after everything.”

Lancelot, to his credit, did not flinch away from the venom in Gawain's words.

_He came to in another cell, a feeling he wished was not so familiar to him, but also thankful to a small degree. It was dark, the type of dark which meant he was underground, not awakening in the middle of the night with no torches or candles nearby. There was a sickly stillness to this type of darkness, a hint of what actual, lasting death would be like._

_Had Lancelot known what the feeling was a preview of, he may have been upset by the situation. Instead, he was in pain and alone and wanting, to his surprise, the comfort of Galehaut._

_He did not know if it was minutes or hours or perhaps even days before he heard a door opening, the light from a torch flooding his cell, burning his eyes despite how quickly he closed them as tightly as he could. He was too weak to do more than curl around himself, the wound still causing too much pain, the dehydration and hunger only making everything worse. He was, he believed in that moment, a disgrace in every way possible._

_What kind of Champion went out like this?_

_“Well,” he swore he knew that voice, “I suppose we could have caught a worse Knight, but really, did you have to kill my best men in cold blood like that?”_

_Lancelot made a strained noise he had hoped would have managed to be more angry, more defiant. All it sounded like was defeat._

_“You're a defiant one, I will give you that,” Morgan! It was Morgan who'd captured him, “And if there is anyone who my idiot of a brother would listen to, it's you, so I will make this as quick as possible. In five months, that twisted bastard of a wizard who has Camelot by the balls is going to convince Arthur that drowning a boat full of babies is a good idea. Since it's you we're stuck with, you are going to have to convince him this is a terrible idea, or better yet, only allow him to be around that damned wizard with other people around. Understood.”_

_Lancelot tried to ask what she meant, what was happening, why would Arthur ever drown children, but none of that came out._

_Nothing at all escaped his lips._

_“The things I do for my sister,” Morgan growled, “She was mortified, you know? When she found out. None of this would have been a problem had Merlin told Arthur who his extended family was, but no. Here we are.”_

_Lancelot did not know, either the sentiment or where **here** was._

_“Do you know how difficult it was for **me** to find Arthur? Me!” she was beginning to ramble, “Merlin is old, and his ability to see the future is clouding right alongside his normal vision. But oh, you are in bad shape aren't you. Suppose you can't deliver a message if you're dead.”_

_Lancelot tried to lift his head to get a better look at her but could not even manage that._

_“Hush,” she told him despite his silence, “sleep now, pet, and you'll feel better in the morning.”_

“I did not feel better in the morning,” Lancelot said ruefully, “I do not suspect I ever felt better again.”

**XIV**  


When Lancelot finally, finally made it back to Camelot, it was atop a cart, his leg still unable to support his weight. Where he was expecting to be shamed and questioned past the point of reason upon his return, he was simply scooped up by Sir Kay and taken directly to Arthur's private quarters.

“Sir,” Kay's voice was tight, “Sir, your Champion has returned.”

“Shut the doors,” Arthur commanded, “and leave us. Lance, what happened.”

“Ambush,” Lancelot managed to say, “I was captive. How long was I gone?”

“Near two weeks,” Arthur was fidgeting – fidgeting – as Kay laid Lancelot down as gently as he could manage on one of the lounging sofas Arthur kept for entertaining purposes. As soon as Kay stood back up, Arthur was on his knees at Lancelot's side, “We found what was left of your horse and your helmet but no other trace of you.”

Lancelot found words hard, found trying to meet his King's eyes even more difficult.

“I will get the others,” Kay's voice was still tight, but there was something else there, something Gawain was unfamiliar with, something that sat so **wrong** a part of Lancelot's mind wished Kay would never return, that someone was going to be missing so whatever news needed to be delivered would remain undelivered.

“That was when you heard Galehaut died,” Gawain realized.

Lancelot sobbed, face buried in his hands.

“It was such a dumb way to die,” Lancelot's voice was broken, raw, reliving it as if it was new all over again, “I should have never gone on that fucking patrol. I should have. He was.”

He was everything, Lancelot realized far too late, and everything had been lost.

**XV**

Lancelot had Galehaut buried in what he knew would one day be his tomb, too, at Joyous Garde. He had the staff and stewards enter a mourning period as Lancelot, too, locked himself in his own castle for three months.

He refused to come out, refused to eat or drink unless he was forced to do so. At one point, presumably at Arthur's insistence, Bedivere stayed with him for two weeks. Bedivere, it seemed, was either incredibly patient or inhumanly stubborn, because it was Bedivere and Bedivere alone who could Lancelot to care for himself on his own volition.

“He was terrifying,” Lancelot recalled, “Like if I did not eat, he was not above simply cramming a handful of food down my throat, hand and all, and removing his hand once he was sure the food would settle.”

“Thanks for the image,” Gawain shivered, “But oh. Oh gods. I can see that. I can see that far too clearly. Oh. Oh no.”

“You didn't have to live it,” Lancelot had meant it in a lighthearted way, but the brighter mood that had dared to try to find its way between them crashed and died before it had a chance to live.

_Lancelot slept next to the closed tomb most nights, whispering his secrets to whatever was left of Galehaut, lamenting how much he missed the other man, how empty the world suddenly felt without him. He apologized, mostly, for going on that patrol, for not being fast enough to dodge, for getting captured, for the storm that had caused Galehaut's horse to slip and pitch the both of them over the edge of the cliff while they were searching for him._

_When he finally returned to Camelot, he found home to be empty, a mockery of what he thought it was, as if it was his naive hopes of being someone worth anything and no more that had made Camelot into a home._

_Despite never having had more people around, he was so, so very alone._

**XVI**

_Had he been asleep the light knock on the door would not have woken him up. Sleep, however, had been avoiding him more than he had been able to find it since his return from mourning._

_“In,” Lancelot said to the darkness._

_Arthur stood in the doorway, illuminated by the still-burning hall torches._

_“My King,” Lancelot rose to his feet, swaying slightly from exhaustion, “How can I help you?”_

_“I could ask you the same thing,” Arthur let the door close behind him, “You have been back for weeks and yet I have barely seen you outside your duties.”_

_“Forgive me, my Lord,” Lancelot let his head hang as he bowed, “I will do better.”_

_“Please,” Arthur took a step closer to Lancelot judging by the sound of soft leather on stone, “let me help you.”_

“Oh no,” Gawain covered his mouth with one hand, “When you said the magic made her look like the one you desired most...”

Lancelot nodded, either unaware of the tears streaming down his face or too frozen to do anything about them.

**XVII**

_Lancelot paced the hall as he waited for Arthur or some guard whose face he would forget in a moment to open the door._

_“Lancelot?” Arthur was clearly still in the process of waking up, “Lance, what's wrong?”_

_Despite his best efforts, Lancelot broke in front of his King, a sob shaking his entire form so violently he thought it may dislodge his bones from their usual places._

_“Come in, please,” Arthur put an arm around Lancelot and ushered him into his rooms, shooing the guards away with a Look that very clearly told them they were not to think of what they saw again, nonetheless so much as breathe a word of it._

_Lancelot told Arthur everything save for the form the woman took. By the time he was done explaining, he thought he was empty, a shell of the Champion left to spend the rest of his days as an extension of the wills of those around him._

Gawain stared at Lancelot rather than the scene unfolding in front them, the pain in Lancelot's face, the sorrow and longing for redemption from a sin he did not commit too much for even Gawain to handle and yet too real, too alive to look away.

_“We will have the castle searched for her,” Arthur said._

_“She may appear to anyone as the one they most desire,” Lancelot had nearly said **as you** but managed to stop himself._

_“We will send a pair who only desires each other,” Arthur thought fast, “Who could never imagine another, and we will send them together.”_

_Lancelot was surprised by this, but even more surprised when he did not send himself, but rather Kay and Bedivere._

_They looked quite a pair upon their arrival, Kay naked from the waist up and Bedivere hugging himself around the waist, a tunic that was clearly not his covering him. They were awake in the exhausted sort of way but came alive with a furious anger no one wanted to be on the receiving end of when they were given the most basic recount of what happened to Lancelot, of their query._

_“If we am not back with her in ten minutes,” Bedivere called over his shoulder as he took off after Kay, “dismiss us from our duties.”_

“That's...” Gawain searched for the words, “Holy fuck. That's terrifying. What happened, but also. Them.”

“It was more than a battle frenzy,” Lancelot had his hands over his face as if not seeing things replayed could spare him the rest of the sensations he'd gone through then from being brought to him anew, “It was something deeply personal, and something they took with them to the grave.”

“Assuming they've made it to their graves,” Gawain pointed out.

And, really, what a curse that would have been on the sensechal and the marshal.

_They had found her almost immediately, brought her back tot he King's chambers secured in rope restraints that no one asked where they obtained._

_“Is this her?” Kay held her by the ropes, her feet dangling off the ground. It was clear she had tried to struggle early on and discovered that was a horrible idea._

_Lancelot nodded, unable to speak._

_The woman was raving about destiny, about Lancelot needing to be the father of the boy who would save Camelot herself, about how she knew he would not have slept with her without her disguise._

_“Banish her,” Arthur had to raise his voice to be heard, “Take her a night's ride and drop her off in the nearest town. If she returns, it will not be so kind. Transport her as you see fit.”_

_Bedivere's chuckle as he and Kay left was deeply, deeply unsettling._

_“It's almost a shame I know they won't harm her,” Guinevere, who had awoken from the commotion and used her rights as Queen to see what was going on, maintained none of her usual veil of formality over her words._

_“Indeed,” Arthur was still kneeling by Lancelot, his attention far more on his Champion than anyone or anything else._

_And oh, if Lancelot's heart did not know how to betray him, that would have allowed him to perhaps some type of comfort or kindness in his King's gesture._

“I sometimes thought it would be easier,” Lancelot's words were heavy despite the hollowness of his voice, “if I knew for sure he held no love for me beyond my skills as Champion.”

**XVIII**  


It was winter, the first winter of Lancelot's life Gawain had seen since they started this journey, and Lancelot was busy repairing parts of the castle walls.

_Lancelot was freezing, teeth chattering but no furs or other insulators to protect him from the outside's chill. He was using mud to try to seal some of the gaps in the armory wall such that they may not lose as many weapons and armor pieces to rust as they had the winter previous._

“I remember this winter,” Gawain said, “It was the coldest of my life. I heard entire towns froze to death.”

“They did,” Lancelot told him, “It was horrific to find, and even worse if the town had been looted after the thaw.”

Gawain shuddered.

_Arthur was there, suddenly, quiet and nearly moving like the shadows._

_“Lance,” Arthur said from far enough away that he was not in swinging range should Lancelot startle, “what are you doing?”_

_“Fixing the wall,” Lancelot said, but there were so many stops and starts that he barely got the words out._

_“Trying to freeze to death is what I'm seeing,” Arthur clasped his King's cloak and draped it over Lancelot's shoulders. The Champion tried to object, but he was too weak from shivering and Arthur was too strong to push away and the cloak was too warm. The instant he felt its weight, he curled into it and closed his eyes._

_“Good,” Arthur tugged the cloak around Lancelot, “Now, come, before you do freeze to death.”_

Watching everything, Gawain noticed he was grinding his teeth.

“I wasn't trying to freeze myself to death,” Lancelot said as if it mattered, “but I don't think I would have resisted it had it happened.”

“He was never so tender, to the rest of the court,” Gawain said.

“He was never so tender to me before...before that,” Lancelot shook his head, “I wondered, often, if by not giving the name of whose form she took I was giving myself away.”

_They were back in Lancelot's private rooms, having moved into a set of rooms that connected with Arthur's chambers some time in the years between Lancelot returning from mourning Galehaut and then. Arthur had a fire going and piled Lancelot with blankets._

_“Should be me watching over you,” Lancelot said as Arthur knelt down and wiped Lancelot's hair away from his forehead._

_“And who watches you, then?” Arthur had not meant for the question to cut so deeply, but it did. Lancelot felt the first tear slip before he could stop it, then another fell, then another and another and another and Arthur was **there** wiping the tears before they could fall, muttering things that seemed kind instead of cruel or harsh._

_“I'm sorry,” Lancelot managed after a while, “I'm sorry.”_

_“There is no need,” Arthur's hand was still on Lancelot's face, “I assure you, there is no need for apologies.”_

_“It just sneaks up on me,” Lancelot closed his eyes and leaned his cheek into Arthur's hand._

_“Please,” Arthur insisted, “let me help you.”_

_Lancelot froze, eyes wide in fear and whole body tense. He knew that phrase from that voice, but the last time it had not been Arthur who said it._

_Arthur leaned back, Lancelot's sudden fear response setting him on edge. Lancelot's form did not relax, his face did not soften, his breath happened in ragged things. Arthur slid the pieces together._

_“What must I do to prove I am not her?” Arthur asked him._

_For his reply, Lancelot wept._

“Oh my God,” Gawain took in a sharp breath of air, “He knew.”

“At least, hi figured it out,” Lancelot ran his hands through his hair, “The rest of the night went horribly. We both wound up recounting being deceived by women who knew what they wanted and were willing to go to any lengths to get it. Arthur told me more secrets about his life and what he's done in that night alone than the rest of the decades I knew him put together.”

“I...” Gawain's train of thought stopped before it really got started, “Wow.”

Lancelot, unsure what Gawain was saying, nodded. Nodding seemed like the safest response.

_By morning the grounds were blanketed in snow so deep the horses could not walk through it. Livestock that had been left in the field would not be found for months. Several barns and some older houses and shops collapsed, some of the collapses claiming the lives of the occupants._

_The winter, it seemed, had no regard for life. It was one think to know winter brought death, and another to see it in such force._

_“I feel so helpless,” Lancelot said as he peered out one of the arrowslits that was not blocked over for the season._

_“We are men,” Arthur said as he draped his cloak around Lancelot once more, “Were we gods perhaps we could control the weather, but what god has ever shown mercy?”_

_“You'd have to ask your nephew about that,” Lancelot said absently._

_Arthur laughed, a free sound that brought a fond smile to Lancelot's lips._

_“I think, anymore, you are the only person who sees me as a man as well as a King,” Arthur confided in Lancelot, “I knew there was going to be much I would have to give up to become King, but I had no idea what it would mean to be a King rather than a man.”_

_“You are both,” Lancelot shifted to face him._

_“To you,” Arthur managed something resembling a laugh, “You have had so little regard for your own care since your return. I cannot lose you, Lancelot. Not to battle, not to time, but especially not to yourself.”_

_Lancelot, unsure of how to make such a promise or even if he was capable of it, simply leaned over and pressed a chaste kiss to Arthur's lips._

Lancelot leaned over to cover Gawain's eyes.

“You don't get to see this,” Lancelot said.

“Oi!” Gawain tried to remove the offending hand, but Lancelot held firm and ignored the part where everything he was feeling, everything he was reliving, Gawain was, too.

**XIX**  


_When the boy came to court, Lancelot knew exactly who he was. Despite his youth, every inch of him was Lancelot – the blond hair, the startling green eyes that saw more than their shine let onto, the proud, righteous gait that youth afforded no one – and there was only one person who could have given birth to Lancelot's child._

_His stomach churned and he excused himself, unwilling to look at the boy and not wanting to fact the reality that one of the worst nights of his life had produced a child._

_He laid on the floor of his rooms, cheek to the cold stone, and tried to empty his mind of every thought he had ever had so that he might be able to one day rise to his feet and not want to claw out his mind._

_Arthur was the one to come and check on him after the boy had been shown to an empty room fit for a squire. There was no way, Lancelot thought, Arthur did not draw the same conclusion._

_“Can I at least coax you to get from floor to the bed? Or even your writing table, really,” Arthur crouched down near Lancelot's head._

_“No,” Lancelot told him, “I do not think you can.”_

_Arthur did not ask what was wrong or what had happened; he had, indeed, come to the same conclusion._

_“Where have the years gone, Lance?” Arthur shed his cloak and laid down next to him._

_“If there is a god of time,” Lancelot murmured, “He had better have a better answer than 'just gone.'”_

_“I used to think they were spent,” Arthur said it like a confession, “but now I fear they are sacrificed to those who have a greater understanding of why we exist at all.”_

_They laid there like that, Lancelot thinking of his bastard son, now well on his way to being a young adult, knowing Arthur was thinking of his own bastard he'd had every chance to kill but did not._

“This one is the worst so far, somehow,” Gawain said before he could stop himself, “How did you know he thought of Mordred?”

“We talked, often,” Lancelot sighed, “about the weight of defying Merlin's prophecy versus slaughtering infants. It ate him alive sometimes and there was nothing I could do but wait it out with him.”

“He gave no outward signs,” Gawain frowned.

“He was King,” Lancelot said as if Gawain needed reminding, “When it was not just the two of us, he was not a man in the way we were men, allowed to have needs and fears that fed our decisions.”

“What stopped him,” Gawain wasn't sure he wanted to know, “from a massacre at Merlin's suggestion? Arthur would have bathed in fire even if it killed him if Merlin told him to do so.”

“His was not the only child with a prophecy attached to it,” Lancelot managed to make eye contact with Gawain, “And I think the weight of knowing mine would get the chance to live and see if prophecy could be side-stepped made him extend it to his own child.”

“Fat lot of good that did,” Gawain muttered, “I loved my uncle and my brother both, but the end was...” he trailed off, realizing there was no help to be offered.

“Worse is always yet to come,” Lancelot said.

**XX**

_He watched the boy grow into a man, face still bare but eyes hardened through training, battle, and faith. This boy, this Galahad, was lauded as the embodiment of perfection, sat above everyone else as a reminder of what the Knights were supposed to be._

_There was no thought to what such pressure would do to such a young mind, no concerns over whether or not the Grail Knight, as he was called more often than his name, needed to be treated as human, too._

_Lancelot had forgone any attempts to bond with his son early on, Galahad out of his reach and Lancelot out of his own depth. The no-longer-boy, not-quite-man, was Knighted by the Queen herself, a grace so rarely given that it was taken as a further sign of Galahad's superiority._

_Lancelot worried for him, prayed he might find some humanity in someone else if he would not let Lancelot explain why he had been so cold, so distant, for years. Lancelot wished he could go back, tell himself how wrong he was to hold the sins of the mother against the son._

Lancelot wept once more but this time did not cover his face, did not close his eyes. There was a love that took root too late still there, the bond of a father who was not ready, who did not know how to be a parent to someone who came into their lives so late yet still wanted to do better, even if better looked a lot like abandonment.

**XXI**

_Arthur's own bastard came to court not long after Galahad was Knighted. Mordred was a reflection of Galahad insomuch as they were each other's balance. Where Galahad was all but made of light, Mordred carried a darkness to him that could not been seen, only felt. Mordred's eyes were sharp and his tongue even sharper, Galahad's bright eyes despite the hardness they earned only serving to show how hardened Mordred was despite his youth._

_Neither of them smiled much at all, but there was the only similarity Lancelot could find. Even when compared to his brothers, Mordred was different. Anyone could see he was a bastard child, a father who was not the King of the Orkneys seed come to fruition._

_The King did his best to avoid his son, as if the truth could he held at bay if they were not seen together, as if not looking his son in the eye could undo whatever had already been done._

_“Lancelot,” Arthur murmured into Lancelot's neck late one night, “how is it you keep from falling apart?”_

_“I cannot fall apart,” Lancelot told him, “for then who would look after you?”_

_“There is no one else I trust,” there was an edge to Arthur's words, one whose sharpness Lancelot would not understand until much, much later._

“Hearing it now,” Lancelot reached for Gawain's had as a form of comfort, “I understand how mad he was going.”

“You could not have known,” Gawain meant it. He let Lancelot grip his hand, did his best to act as the anchor Lancelot so clearly needed.

“If we are dead,” there was a thin veneer of ice over Lancelot's words, “why does it hurt so much?”

“I cannot say,” Gawain told him. Whether due to lack of knowledge or a binding censor, Lancelot could not tell.

_To watch Galahad grow into a man, to have his son follow the path the prophecy that caused him so much shame and pain and panic, did little more than shave out what little hope Lancelot had left within him._

_Mordred, too, grew alongside Galahad, Arthur's bastard growing more cold and calculation the more Lancelot's became a living Saint among the sinners._

_There were those who sat around the Table who wanted answers, wanted to know why the King and his Champion both kept their bastard sons a secret for so long, wanted to know who had given birth to Galahad, demanded to know why the Champion should be allowed to cast aside a woman who he had left with child._

_Careless tongues spoke of these things in front of their children, Lancelot knew, could see in the way Galahad looked upon him as they all sat at the Round Table. Mordred had not earned the trust of Arthur's innermost court, and as such had not been allowed to sit with them, to learn the secrets of Camelot and her King._

_“How can I trust him?” Arthur was on his knees again, “How can I trust a child begotten from deceit and raised without my oversight?”_

_“The same way you trust his brothers,” Lancelot tried to be helpful as he carded his fingers through Arthur's hair. That earned a small laugh from Arthur, a nearly honest thing._

“How could you talk about that when...” Gawain gestured to the scene in front of them.

“We had so few moments to ourselves,” Lancelot sighed, “so we took advantage of them as much as we could.”

“That seems like the least pleasing form of multi-tasking I have ever seen,” Gawain noted. Lancelot made a displeased noise but had not let go of Gawain's hand.

_“They say you are leaving in the morning,” Lancelot said to his son from his son's doorway, “that the time to seek the Grail is here.”_

_“Correct,” Galahad had packed and unpacked his saddlebags three times already that Lancelot had witnessed, “There are two who will accompany me, but only those two.”_

_Lancelot knew of whom he was referring: Percival, a Knight who had surprised everyone, coming from nothing and rising to Knighthood like no one they had seen before, save Galahad, and Bors, who Lancelot would trust on the battlefield but did not know how he felt entrusting Bors with his son._

_And there it was, he supposed, that Bors should have a wife and child and, as far as anyone knew, a happy, peaceful domestic life to return to. How Bors had managed that as a Knight of the Round Table was beyond Lancelot. Bors, the father, would take his son and a son whose mother died of Grief and father died in War, as his charges for the most sacred of quests._

_Lancelot knew he had not been a good father, or even a remotely decent father, but still, he would have liked to think God would have included him in his own son's Destiny beyond fathering him._

Gawain wanted to say something, wanted to put words to Lancelot's pain as he felt it, but all he could do was open and close his mouth while letting silent tears stream down his face.

**XXII**  


_“What do you suppose it will mean,” Arthur asked one morning, “for Camelot to house the Grail?”_

_“I do not dare speculate on what God intends,” Lancelot said with carefully measured words and a lowered gaze. He wished to disappoint neither King nor God, Arthur nor the divine._

_“Hmn,” Arthur's noise was not a happy one, nor was it angry, “They have been gone a long time.”_

_“Perhaps the Grail is far away,” Lancelot wished he believed his own words, “or perhaps there is a series of trials they must undertake before they can find where the Grail is hidden.”_

_“I hope you are right,” Arthur said as he stretched, “How is it you are in my bed more often than my wife?”_

_“I am where ever you ask me to be,” it came out with more urgency than Lancelot had intended. Still, Arthur chuckled._

_“I fear she would prefer it this way,” Arthur confessed, “She is a kind woman and an excellent Queen, but we are no more compatible in personal ways than oil and water.”_

_Lancelot, unsure of how to proceed, took a moment to find words, find a sentiment that would please Arthur._

_“Don't think so hard you hurt yourself,” Arthur's tone was playful but his words not unlike a slap, “There is nothing to be done to change the relationship between her and I, save one of us dying.”_

_“I hope it does not come to that,” Lancelot said in earnest. Arthur made a sad sort of sighing sound and brought Lancelot closer to him.”_

“Christ,” Gawain invoked the name of a demigod he did not believe in, “Had the court known they would have split in so many directions Camlann would have been more akin to Caesar.”

“Ah, but who would have been Brutus,” Lancelot's reply was so instant it could have been reflexive had Gawain not known for a fact this was the first time anyone besides himself and Arthur knew how deep their relationship ran.

A boy perhaps a year away from being a squire ran into their meeting, red in the face and gasping for breath.

“What is it boy?” Arthur demanded, “What has you running like your life depends on it?”

Several Knights already had their swords drawn, expecting an attack or something of similar caliber.

“They have returned,” the boy panted, “Those who went to seek the Grail have returned!”

Lancelot was already halfway down the hallway before the boy could finish his announcement.

“Ah,” Gawain remembered what he saw next, remembered the anguish in every inch of Lancelot's body, but did not know exactly what Lancelot had seen or heard besides Galahad's absence.

_Bors was riding without a saddle, armor gone and clothes worn to tatters. A lifeless figure was slung across his horse in front of him, body bloated and clearly having been dead for several days at least._

_The body's hair was the wrong color, too dark to be his son's, but there was no third figure._

_Bors let the stable hands take his horse's lead and slid off, landing without grace, the impact or something else entirely bringing Bors to his knees. Lancelot ran over to him, knelt in front of him, and before he could ask, Bors began apologizing over and over, soft, barely-there words Lancelot could barely make out. Still, he knew what they meant: Galahad was not coming home._

_The sable hands let one of the older Knights take the horse and the body away and then scurried out of the courtyard, eyes wide with fear, the image of Percival's corpse forever burned into their minds._

_“I couldn't,” Bors was sobbing, “I'm sorry, I wanted to bring him home, too, I'm sorry.”_

_Lancelot let out a primal scream that shook the souls of the Knights and King who had only just now made it to the scene._


	3. Chapter 3

**XXIII**

_There was a melancholy that lingered long after Lancelot's grief faded into a distrust for Prophecy._

_“It makes me glad you decided to defy Merlin's warnings about your own son,” Lancelot's back was to Arthur, so he missed the storm that was gathering in Arthur's eyes._

_“Merlin never needed my permission,” Arthur nearly spat out the word, “he was going to do it whether I said he could or not.”_

_Lancelot froze, letting each of Arthur's words settle, letting the entire foundation he'd built his understanding of Arthur's strength and defiance and fortitude crumble._

_“What?” It was a strangled sound, barely even a question at all, but its meaning was clear: **You lied to me.**_

_“Merlin was going to drown a boat full of babies no matter what I said,” Arthur said slowly, all feeling removed from his voice, “That I refused only served to give him permission to do as he saw fit for Camelot regardless of what I thoughts or said.”_

_Lancelot did not turn around to face Arthur, as if keeping his eyes averted would keep his King's words from being real. Instead, he excused himself, left Arthur truly alone for the first time since Arthur had pieced together who it was Lancelot most wanted comfort from following Galehaut's death._

“This was the night it all really went to shit, wasn't it?” Gawain asked. Lancelot nodded. Gawain sucked in a sharp breath.

“Was the parts of this night we, uh, we shared in your walk-through?” Lancelot deflected the burden of answering back to Gawain, wishing it had indeed been the night everything had, as Gawain so eloquently put it, gone to shit.

“Walk-through,” Gawain made a noise caught between a laugh and a scoff, “How can you call it something so tame?”

“What else am I to call it?” Lancelot's voice held a calm that, had Gawain known him better in life, would have known to be the harbinger of a storm.

“Something with more feeling?” Gawain suggested, “Something that better captures, well, everything?”

“I **lost** my everything,” Lancelot growled, “I outlived everyone and everything that I dared care about, and for what? To have to re-live it as my _reward_ for finally having the decency to die?”

Gawain flinched away from Lancelot, a thing he had never done in life.

Then again, in life, Lancelot had never been so terrifying.

_Lancelot ran, only partly aware he was half naked with scratch makes down his back, until he quite literally ran into the Queen._

_“Lance?” she did not stumble or even lose her balance, “Lance, what's going on?”_

_There was a tenderness to her, a genuine warmth as if she saw him as a person rather than the Champion he had not known he was missing from his life that caused him to stop his destionationless flight from the King's chambers._

_“I cannot tell you here,” Lancelot looked around, knowing he could never know who was listening and from where they were waiting, unseen._

_“Come with me,” she said quietly._

_He followed her to Kay's quarters where the sensechal was pouring over trade and tax records, candles nearly burnt out, face gaunt with haunted shadows under his eyes that were not a product of the low light._

_“Now Lance,” she guided him to sit on the edge of Kay's bed, “please, what happened?”_

_Lancelot looked over to Kay, stare so concentrated other men would have felt the weight and shied away. Kay, for his part, only said, “As if these walls do not hold enough secrets to ruin the Kingdom several times over.”_

_Lancelot looked around the room as if to verify it was only the three of them._

_“Arthur has lost control of Camelot,” Lancelot went straight to the heart of the matter, “Camelot's fate belongs to Merlin, not Arthur.”_

_Kay looked up so fast he knocked his pot of ink over. He did not move to correct it, letting the ink bleed all over his desk._

_“What?” Kay demanded more information._

_Lancelot told the two of them, the sensechal and the Queen – Kay and Guinevere – everything that had happened since he had first met Galehaut, sparing to detail no matter how damning it was._

_“Shit,” Kay hissed once he was sure Lancelot's story – one that had come in fits and starts and involved nearly as much crying as it had words, “That's. Fuck.”_

_“Eloquent as always,” Guinevere couldn't help herself._

_Kay narrowed his eyes but did not snap or even supply a minor retort. Instead, he rose from his desk, ink already staining his tunic, his hose, his arms and hands, and walked over to where Lancelot was seated on his bed, and grabbed Lancelot's chin with his thumb and forefinger, forcing the Champion's eyes to meet his, terrified blue meeting all-seeing gray._

_“It's the truth,” Kay said with a sigh when he finally released Lancelot, smudges of ink leaving themselves on Lancelot's face, “Damn everything, Gwen, he tells the truth. Every last word.”_

_“What just happened?” Lancelot asked before he could be sure he wanted to know the answer, “and where is Bedivere?” The Marshall's absence suddenly seemed important._

_“In the kitchens,” Kay told him, “He will return soon, I am sure of it.”_

_“Only soul in the world who can help himself to the kitchens and not fear your wrath,” Guinevere pointed out._

_“Because he knows what we can spare,” Kay raised an eyebrow, “down to the grain.”_

“They both took on a lot more than they let on,” Lancelot noted.

“The two of them together did the work of a dozen men,” Gawain agreed, “More, on the battlefield.”

“Perhaps Kay should have been King,” Lancelot felt like a traitor for his words, even in death.

“Perhaps,” Gawain shrugged, “If nothing else it would have been interesting to see how Merlin managed to out-stubborn Kay without Kay just burning the entire kingdom down to spite the wizard.”

“That,” Lancelot grimaced, “was more or less what happened, in the end.”

_Lancelot was on his knees in front of Arthur. The sunlight had just barely began to filter through the windows, dawn coming too early for Lancelot's liking. In the daylight, avoiding the way his world had changed overnight would prove to be impossible._

_“I am sorry,” Lancelot told his King, “I am sorry.”_

_“Oh Lance,” Arthur had Lancelot's hair firmly wrapped around his fingers, “I forgive you.”_

_“I am sorry,” Lancelot repeated._

_“What you must think of me,” Arthur sounded full of remorse, “to have not told you the truth for so long.”_

_“I forgive you,” Lancelot hoped he sounded more sincere than he felt, “Always.”_

_He must have sounded genuine, because Arthur made a pleased sort of sound and tugged on Lancelot's hair._

“Holy fuck,” Gawain's eyes were wide.

“Nothing holy about it,” Lancelot deflected again.

“Oh my god,” Gawain groaned, “Just one. They can decide among themselves.

If Lancelot had not known what was likely to come next on whatever journey he seemed unable to opt out of, he may have laughed.

**XXIV**

_“I need to go to Orkney,” Arthur told Lancelot, “Their Queen is dead and I must go pay my respects.”_

“That was such a mild way to put it,” Gawain spat, “and does no justice to her death or how little Arthur cared for her in life.” He glanced sideways at Lancelot, waiting to see if he would defend his King. There was nothing the former Champion had to offer in reply or retort.

“When do we leave?” Lancelot asked.

“I need you to stay here,” Arthur told him, “I fear my Queen,” he spat out the word, “grows tired of Camelot and may try to do something to weaken my power in my absence.”

“Of course,” Lancelot did not need to fake the surprise and concern in his voice, “what do you fear is going on, my love,” he had nearly said **my lord**.

Arthur made a pleased purring sound at the verbal affection. “There have been several tax records missing or rearranged,” Arthur told him, “Kay is the only other person who knows his way around the records, and he has been far too busy to seek out exact pages.”

Lancelot nearly asked how exact the pages had been, but Arthur was already acting closer to the paranoid side of the suspicion spectrum. Any exact questions, anything too close to the issue and he feared Arthur would turn on him, too. Instead, Lancelot asked: “What would you have me do?”

“Stay close to her,” Arthur encouraged him, “Act as her Champion, as you would, and take careful note of when she requests to be left alone or in the company of another.”

“I will,” Lancelot promised, “Who would you have go with you?”

“Gawain,” Arthur was quick to reply, “and Gareth. They are both still firmly rooted in Orkney.”

“If he had told me that was the reason I would have laughed in his face,” Gawain missed the rest of Arthur's statement, “Not even intentionally. It just. Wow. I knew he was a little out of touch with the court at this point, but that could not have been more wrong.”

“He feared taking Mordred would only highlight how little he looked like the rest of you,” Lancelot shook his head, “as if the Orkney throne was the one he needed to worry about.”

“Well I did **kind of** leave Mordred on the throne anyways,” Gawain pointed out.

“And he stayed in Camelot for most of it,” Lancelot countered, “Who ran Orkney, in the absence of both you and your regent?”

“Good question,” Gawain said with a shrug.

“You don't know, do you?” Lancelot accused.

“Nope!” Gawain could admit that freely now, there being no real consequences of admitting ignorance in death.

Lancelot sighed and turned his attentions back to the scene.

_He told Guinevere what Arthur had told him, word for word._

_“Strange,” Kay was sitting on his own bed this time, Bedivere still sound asleep behind him, “I am the only one with a key to the area the tax records are held. Or has he forgotten that?”_

_“If you're the only one with the key, how does he know there are records missing?” Lancelot asked._

_“I let him in when he requests it,” Kay explained, “and as long as the door is shut behind him, it locks on its own.”_

_“How?” Lancelot was genuinely curious._

_“The door is at an incline, so the force of it closing forces the latch in place,” Kay told him, “makes it easier when I have my arms full.”_

_Behind him, Bedivere made a displeased, still mostly asleep sound and rolled over, bringing the blankets over his head._

_“Sundays,” Kay rolled his eyes, “How did you two get in here, anyways?”_

_“You left the door unlocked,” Guinevere told him. Kay made a face but said nothing, so Guinevere continued, “Well, that he would immediately jump to it being me who took records is alarming in and of itself, but how often does he check the records that he would know some were missing?”_

_“His memory is much better than he pretends,” Kay pinched the bridge of his nose as if it could lessen the strain of the convoluted situation he was voluntarily wading into, “He has only requested access twice since the night you two came in here and well,” Kay paused, “Well.”_

_“Does he know?” Lancelot indicated Bedivere with a twitch of his head._

_“Only the most basic,” Kay told them, “He understands I often hear secrets I am meant to forget.”_

_“We should all be so lucky,” Guinevere held no resentment for the couple in her words or actions._

_“Mine,” Kay was quick to put a hand on Bedivere's shoulder. Despite herself, Guinevere let out a small laugh._

_“Step one,” Lancelot redirected the conversation, “is to figure out which records are missing. Could it be the ones you spilled ink on?”_

_“No,” Kay shook his head but kept his hand on Bedivere, “those were copies. I only take copies that I make in the record rooms out with me.”_

_“Smart,” Lancelot complimented, “Would you be able to tell which ones are missing?”_

_“If I can't, replace me,” Kay glared. Lancelot held up his hands in a sort-of surrender, “Once I am awake for the day, I will see what I can find. Meet back here tonight once the hall candles have burned themselves out, no sooner. Now shoo. I have the rest of a Sunday morning to tend to.”_

“He had no shame,” a small, almost disbelieving laugh escaped Gawain.

“He did not held up the entire behind-the-curtain aspects of Camelot by holding onto things such a shame,” Lancelot appraised. Gawain made a noise of agreement.

**XXV**

_To sneak around the castle better after hours, Guinevere had borrowed some clothes from a stablehand, her royal figure masked but the grace and power he carried as evident as it had ever been. She insisted she and Lancelot head to Kay's quarters separately to reduce their chances of being seen and Lancelot had not seen a way to argue with her._

_Still, he was relieved when he got to Kay's rooms and found his Queen, Kay, and Bedivere there. Kay looked short of breath, something wild behind his eyes._

_Mordred was there, too, arms crossed over his chest with Bedivere and Kay standing on either side of him as if guarding him, making sure he did not take flight. There was not a part of Mordred that did not hold some type of anger._

_“Is this any way to treat me?” Mordred's words were acidic, “On the day of my mother's funeral, which I have been forbidden from attending for reasons I do not understand, you bring me before the King's Champion in some mockery of a trial?” Every word was louder than the last. Mordred's eyes were panicked but the rest of him was proud, defiant._

_So much like his father._

_“So,” Kay seemed immune to Mordred's accusations, “I was going well after dark to the record rooms, and someone else was already in there. Somebody who, quite thankfully, decided to throw his candle at me instead of any of the assorted weapons he had on him.”_

_Mordred shrunk in on himself, cowing before Kay's calm._

_“Threw a candle,” Lancelot made sure he had heard that correctly, “in a room full of parchments?”_

_“Correct,” Kay nodded._

_“Uh,” Lancelot looked between Mordred and Kay a few times before looking at Bedivere who shrugged._

_“We are now a kingdom without most of our records,” Kay sighed, “but I fear that is the least of our worries.”_

_“He tried to drown me!” Mordred cried, “Tried to drown hundreds of infants! And you would try **me**!?”_

_“We know,” Bedivere finally said something. All the fight seemed to drain from Mordred, his arms falling lax by his sides._

_“You what?” Mordred croaked._

_Lancelot could not help the sigh that escaped before he explained the situation to Mordred, forcing himself to spare only the details a son would under no circumstances want to know about his father. Mordred listened, mouth handing open and shoulders slack._

_“Why did you not tell me?” Mordred sounded near tears._

_“I,” Kay saved Lancelot from having to answer, “was hoping to find the records of the boat's contents, to see if it could have even been defended as an accident or a coincidence.”_

_“But why?” Mordred's voice was rising again, “Why did you need to wait before you told me of such things?”_

_“Because accusing a King is a tricky undertaking,” Kay's carefully neutral expression flickered into a frown for a bright moment, “and even trickier when he has the likes of Merlin willing to do whatever he needs to in order to keep Camelot in his grasps.”_

_“My aunt is a sorcerer, too,” Mordred was referring to Morgan, “Merlin is old.”_

_“Your aunt is almost impossible to reach,” Bedivere pointed out, “and will not be able to get here before Arthur returns.”_

_“You say that like we will have no time between his return and...whatever it is you lot planned on doing,” Mordred's words were steady but there was a fear creeping into his posture he so clearly had never had to face before._

_“Well,” Kay's words were unmeasured, a sharp contrast to his nephew, “we didn't really have a plan beyond **find the records first** and Arthur is sure to start something when he learns we no longer have most of our records.”_

_“Kay, sweetheart,” Bedivere's tone told the other three in the room whatever he was about to say was for their benefit, not his, “You have magic, yes? What was your magic again?”_

_“You have **what??** ” Mordred and Lancelot both squeaked._

_“Fire, ice, a few other things,” Kay's reply was effortless, “Why do you ask, darling?”_

_“So the records that all caught fire,” Bedivere's words were much more pointed the second round, “could have been stopped before the fire even touched them.”_

_“Or the burning could have been sped up,” Kay did nothing to hide the fact he was unashamed of his choices._

_“Well shit,” Mordred looked at Kay as if he had never **truly** seen him before._

_“So what do we do now?” Guinevere asked, every inch of her still Queen of a doomed Kingdom._

_“How much do you trust me?” Kay asked her directly._

_“With my life,” Guinevere did not hesitate to answer._

_“Excellent,” Kay's face cracked into a grin, a feral thing that caused even Bedivere to take a step back, “You three, leave us.”_

_Lancelot did not need to be told twice._

“Fuck,” Gawain breathed, “You had no idea what they planned together?”

“None,” Lancelot admitted, “nor do I think I would have been helpful even if they had included me.”

“Even Bedivere did not know?” Gawain was in shock.

“Presumably,” Lancelot frowned, wondering what more this replayed snippet of his life could possibly have left to tear whatever was left of his soul into unsalvageable ribbons.

_Just outside the door, Mordred looked at the slab of wood like it held answers to the questions he did not have the strength to ask aloud._

_“Well,” Bedivere was barefoot on the cold stone, “who wants a snack?”_

_“Snack sounds good,” Lancelot agreed._

_Mordred went to make a noise of agreement, but all that came out was a sob that heralded the first crack in the young man's anger._

_Before he realized what he was doing, Lancelot hugged Mordred like he wished he had hugged his own son, an honest, protective thing, as if the love of a father could have offered any shelter from the world._

**XXVI**

_Lancelot ran the pad of his thumb over the worn edge of the round table as he waited for Arthur to join those who had assembled already. It was aged, even splintering if he was not careful and oh, did that feel appropriate._

_Mordred, Bedivere, Kay, Bors, Gawain, and Caradoc sat with him, all resisting the urge to fidget in front of other Knights, all biting near through their tongues to avoid asking questions. Kay was not in his usual seat, instead closer to the door, casting periodic glances over his shoulder._

_Had Lancelot not known Kay as well as he did, the sensechal's repeated checking would have been seen as restlessness rather than nervousness._

_There was no notice about this meeting, no warning, just the King going from room to room demanding his most trusted Knights join him at the Round Table before an announcement had even been made he had returned from the funeral. He had clearly traveled through the night to come home, had heard **something** that hastened his return journey._

_“Sir,” Lancelot stood from his seat as soon as Arthur entered the room, a small handful of Knights behind him. There were candles everywhere, but the light was still so low he had to squint to make out who were the last in the room._

_“There was an **incident** while I was away,” Arthur was more range than either man or King, “Our trusted Marshall was wise enough to ride out to warn me: Our tax and shipping records were destroyed in an attempt to distort Camelot's debt and strength.”_

_There was a collective shocked sound around the room. Lancelot stepped on Mordred's foot as gently as possible, a small reminded to stay as silent as possible. If the Queen trusted him, they needed to trust the two of them as well._

_Mordred got the hint and redirected his shock to Bedivere, sneaking glances at everyone else's faces to take hints of how to mold his own._

_“The Queen,” Bedivere's words were heavy, a venom to them Lancelot had never heard before, “seems to have only been sent to us by her beloved Rome to weaken us and give them a better chance to reclaim lands that were never theirs.”_

_There was an uproar, each voice sure its question, its demand for more information was more important, more urgent, had more merit than the others._

_Arthur slammed his fist on the table three times in rapid succession and the quiet that fell over the Round Table's chamber was somehow heavier than the news._

_From the doorway, sounds of struggle and pleas for mercy were heard before the Queen, bound in rope, still trying to fight the two nameless Knights who held her by either arm, came into view._

_There were a handful of unrestrained gasps, but otherwise the silence held._

_“For treason,” Arthur barked, “the punishment is death.”_

_“Punish me all you want,” Guinevere snarled, “It's already done.” She was kicked in the back of the kneecap so that she fell to her knees and then again between her shoulder blades so she fell forward, cheek hitting stone._

_“Very well,” any trace of care he had left for his wife vanished, “Better to get this over with. Do it.” Arthur started to walk across the room, tried to take his seat at the Table, either unwilling or not caring to watch his wife's beheading._

_It was only the sound of steel hitting steel instead of flesh that made Arthur turn around again._

_Kay was there, his sword blocking the executioner's sword, eyes wild and stance steadfast._

_“KAY!” Arthur screamed, “STAND DOWN!”_

_“No,” Kay grunted, the force of staying the sword more clearly taking more effort than it seemed._

_“Sir Kay,” Arthur snapped, “to who do your loyalties lie?”_

_“To Camelot,” Kay deflected the other sword and rammed his forehead into his opponent's nose, “Always to Camelot.”_

_There was a scuffle, a sudden shattering of the table as sides were chosen, lines drawn._

_“Lance,” it was far more a King looking to his Champion than it was Arthur looking at Lancelot, “Please, Lance.”_

_“I'm sorry,” Lancelot said as he lept onto the table and sprinted across it, “You are not the Arthur who took the throne.”_

_“Then who the hell do you think I am?” Arthur demanded, sword still not drawn._

_“Merlin's puppet,” Lancelot looked directly at him before taking off again. Mordred and Bedivere were on his heels, Bedivere lifting Guinevere by the ropes and slinging her over his shoulder. She let out a small, surprised sound but remained relaxed, as if she knew this was what was going to happen._

“Holy shit,” Gawain seemed to be saying that a lot.

“Yeah,” Lancelot agreed.

“I stood by my Uncle,” Gawain shook his head, “for what?”

“For your own faith,” Lancelot dared not look at Gawain, afraid of what he would see, “as I held up mine.”

_Bedivere lead them to the stables where he was able to undo the knots that held Guinevere bound with a few simple tugs._

_“What type of executioner does quick release knots?” Bors had followed them._

_“The type who knows this is coming,” Bedivere answered, “My Queen, are you ready to ride?”_

_“As ready as anyone can be for this,” she shed her nightgown to reveal the stablehand's clothes, “Where are we going?”_

_“South,” Bedivere looked to Lancelot, “to a castle Arthur has never been to.”_

_“Right,” Lancelot swallowed, “What about the others?”_

_“They will die in the chambers or they will die as treasonists,” Bedivere sighed, giving the castle a long last look._

_“Kay is still in there!” Mordred cried._

_“I am aware,” Bedivere's eyes were cold, “He knows what he needs to do. Anyone who, like us, has decided Arthur is no longer worthy of calling King will find their own ways out.”_

_Lancelot shivered, worried but found he still trusted Bedivere, even as he doomed his own partner._

_It wasn't like he was doing any different to Arthur._

**XXVII**

_Agrivane and Caradoc had joined them in their flight, Agrivane following Mordred and Caradoc following his instinct. Despite all of them arriving alive, there was no joy to be found at Joyous Garde. Lancelot had never wanted to return in life, only wanted to be reunited with Galehaut in death._

“It's worse, now,” Lancelot scrubbed at the tears falling down his face again, “knowing how much I cared for him.”

“I can't imagine,” Gawain meant it.

_They arrived exhausted, their horses near death, their clothes and skin and hair and probably souls covered in mud and blood. They were hungry, thirsty, in desperate need of a wash, of new clothes entirely._

_“My Lord,” someone who Lancelot did not know greeting him, “what happened.”_

_“Not now,” Lancelot shook his head as he did his best to stand up straight, to look a little like a King was supposed to look, “Please. Warm baths, food, drink, first, please.”_

_“Of course, sir,” the stranger who may well be a servant or the castle's steward, “Where shall I prepare your guests' baths drawn?”_

_“Near my rooms,” Lancelot did not want to be separated from them, but a private bath would probably do everyone a world of good, even if it was fleeting._

_“Of course,” the stranger bowed, “Right away, sir.”_

_“Holy fuck,” Agrivane was already sitting on the floor, exhausting having taken his legs out from under him, “you really are a King.”_

_“I wish I was making it up,” Lancelot sighed._

_“If you're looking for a regent...” Agrivane left the rest of the sentence unsaid. Mordred kicking him in the kneecap._

_“You have horrendous timing,” Mordred informed his brother, “and absolutely no tact.”_

_“That's never going to change,” Caradoc held no bitterness despite the words, “Thank you, Lancelot, for your hospitality.”_

_“It would be my pleasure were the circumstances better,” Lancelot stopped himself from bowing, had to actively remind himself **he** was King here._

_“What are the circumstances?” Bors asked, “We have ridden for days, only stopping when one of us our a horse was near dangerous levels of exhaustion but at least three of us do not know what we have fled for, do not know why we stand against Arthur.”_

_“How do you have so many words?” Mordred asked. Bors shrugged. Guinevere swatted Mordred on the shoulder, a gentle thing._

_Lancelot sighed, a heavy thing that threatened to take the last of his energy with it, and explained what was going on, what had already happened, to them as he had to Mordred._

_“I should probably mention,” Bedivere's voice was lighter than anyone else's, “that Arthur does not know of his foster-brother's magic.”_

_“Why not?” Guinevere asked._

_“Magic?” Bors, Caradoc, and Agrivane asked at the same time._

_“He did not see himself using it as such a large scale,” Bedivere kept his voice low, “but in general he did not want to become the King's **pet magician** when he already had so much work to do.”_

_“That's unsettling,” Guinevere shivered, “Wait, what do you mean,_ on such a large scale _?”_

_“Think about it,” Bedivere looked directly at Guinevere, “As far as anyone else is concerned, you escaped because of Kay's actions,” there was a series of gestures of agreement, “He is going to make sure the whole of Camelot understands what happens to traitors.”_

_“A burning,” horror etched itself onto Bors' face._

_“And we just left him there??” Caradoc cried._

_“...and he has fire magic,” Mordred said so quietly everyone almost missed it._

“Do you know what it's like to burn to death?” Gawain asked.

“You know how I died,” Lancelot frowned, “So, no, I do not.”

Gawain could have brought Lancelot back from the dead to kill him again himself this time if he had the know-how.

**XXVIII**

_Kay arrived two days after everyone else, equally filthy and even more exhausted than they had been. Lancelot was told of Kay's arrival not through anything resembling a usual channel, but by Bedivere screaming his partner's name so loud Lancelot heard it from near a third away across the castle. He ran as quickly as he could, body still recovering from the hard ride, to find Kay and Bedivere both on their knees in the middle of the castle's welcome area, embracing each other._

_He had never seen either men so much as shed a tear, so the sight of both of them weeping made him pause, then leave so they could have their reunion in as close to private as possible._

_He ran into Bors, then Mordred and Guinevere, then Agrivane, turning them all back the way they came._

_“Give them a moment,” Lancelot told each of them, “I am sure Kay will tell us as much as he is able as soon as he is able.”_

_“But there was a scream,” Mordred tried to argue._

_“Trust me,” Guinevere put a hand on Mordred's back, “give them their moment.”_

_Mordred made an indignant noise but listened to her._

“She was gentle,” Gawain commented, “Our mother would have dragged him away by the earlobe.”

“I know it is in bad taste to speak ill of the dead,” Lancelot gave a careful sideways glance to Gawain, “but perhaps her parenting skills left something to be desired.”

Gawain, despite the anger in his eyes, laughed so hard that Lancelot could not help but worry.

_Caradoc was still at the main dining table where Lancelot had left him, parchment everywhere and ink splattered in places that indicated a carelessness to the notes._

_“What's going on?” Agrivane surveyed the mess._

_“Honestly?” Lancelot ducked his head, sheepish, “I have no idea how to be a King, so Caradoc's teaching me.”_

_“How were there so many Kings around my father's table?” Mordred asked._

_“He was a different man,” Caradoc's words held a sadness that brought tears to Lancelot's eyes, “when he was a new King.”_

_“Tell me about him,” Mordred requested, “Tell me about the man everybody loved, not the man I knew.”_

_“If you are certain,” Caradoc looked at the bastard Prince as a man rather than an open secret for the first time. Mordred nodded and Caradoc began speaking._

“He really was different,” Gawain's voice echoed Caradoc's, “when we were young.”

“You were only a few years younger than him, yes?” Lancelot was unsure.

“Yeah,” Gawain swallowed whatever feelings were trying to form, “We could have been raised as both foster-brothers and cousins and he would not have been able to remember my being an infant.”

Lancelot had never really considered what it must have felt like, knowing Arthur was your uncle while he took your word for it, never thought to ask his sister's name or what she looked like. Perhaps, to Arthur, family only extended to what Merlin told him family was.

_Kay and Bedivere joined them, Kay not having taken time to wash or even seek clean clothes or food, Bedivere's arm wrapped so firmly around Kay's waist they nearly became one being._

_“Camelot lies in ashes,” Kay announced, voice nowhere near as strong as it usually was, “I do not know who remains, what state the survivors are in, but I can tell you the Castle itself is no more.”_

_There was a weighted silence, and uncertainty regarding where to go from there._

_“Those who were in the castle were given plenty of time to get out,” Kay assured everyone, “Only those who remained most loyal to Arthur attended what was supposed to be my funeral pyre, an act of defiance that would have cost them their lives had it happened like a predictable burning.”_

_“It's good to see you, too,” Guinevere rose to her feet and walked over to Kay and embraced him. Kay made a small sound of disbelief before he returned the hug, unsure of the gesture at first but it became a genuine thing full of relief._

_Lancelot averted his eyes, feeling like he was intruding._

“It was your castle!” Gawain pointed out.

“It was not my moment,” Lancelot threw his hands up in a surrendering gesture.

“I did not know the Queen and the King's foster-brother were so close,” the words sounded wrong as he said them, so Gawain tried again, “that Kay and Guinevere were so close.”

“I have no idea how close they were before everything began to unravel,” Lancelot began chewing on his lip, “but it almost seems the Queen viewed the sensechal as her Champion while Guinevere looked to Kay as a brother.”

“It amazes me,” Gawain tried to keep his tone light, determined not to let his feelings leak out too much, even in death, “how different everyone was behind their titles.”

_Kay was curled into himself and half asleep on one of the spare couches in Lancelot's quarters. He was half-asleep and looked impossibly small. Bedivere was sitting in front of Kay as if to guard him from the world while he recovered._

_“Where did you source all this?” Mordred asked from another couch, poking at the fabric._

_“I have no idea,” Lancelot admitted, “Every time I come back, everything's different. Improved, but different.”_

_“It's so soft,” Mordred went from poking the fabric to petting it._

_“We've lost him,” Agrivane told everyone else, a small smile daring to play across his features, “He'll be back in a bit, but we've lost him.”_

“He was like that, sometimes, especially as a child,” Gawain felt the need to explain what Agrivane met, “He'd find a fabric or a rock or an animal and just...run his hands over it, sometimes for hours. It was as if the rest of the world had fallen away, just him and the object. He'd outgrown it, we thought, but...”

“But exhaustion strips away a lot of the things we build to make other people believe we have learned the behaviors they want of us,” Lancelot finished for him. Gawain made a small noise of surprise, clearly not having expected Lancelot to understand.

_Lancelot felt out of place in his own quarters, what we left of his friends trying to relax, trying to put what they did not know was coming out of their minds, even if only for the night._

_“Thank you, again,” Caradoc said, the uneasy silence shrinking away from the noise, “for your hospitality.”_

_“Of course,” Lancelot meant it, “I would not have any of you – and of us – take refuge anywhere else.”_

_“It is safest here,” Caradoc agreed, “and well-supplied.”_

_“Supplied,” Agrivane echoed, “Do you think there is reason to mind the supplies?”_

_“I do not know what is coming,” Bedivere looked back towards Kay, “or if anything is coming.”_

_“Whatever it may be,” Guinevere looked at Lancelot, “there is one man whose courage and defiance gave us the room to survive.”_

_And, really, Lancelot had never felt courageous or defiant, but he knew better than to refute the praise of a Queen._

**XXIX**  
A Warning

_The rider came less than a month after Kay's arrival, a young man who was so worn down and terrified it took Lancelot a moment to recognize him. Lancelot thought he recognized the crest on his horse's bridle, so he had him let in the gate._

_“Gareth?” Lancelot asked as he helped the young man from his saddle to the ground_

_“Sir,” Gareth was unsteady on his feet, his brothers there in an instant, one on either side, “Merlin is amassing survivors and plans on launching an attack on Joyous Garde if he can find it.”_

_“How did you find it?” Lancelot asked._

_“Sir Bedivere left directions,” Gareth was being fully supported by his brothers, “One by one, but I recognized them from hunting.”_

_Kay's face paled as he realized he had not destroyed the directions as he'd found them._

_“No,” Kay whispered._

_“I was careful,” Gareth said, “and destroyed them, but there is no telling what Merlin has at his disposal.”_

_“My aunt,” Mordred was the first to say anything, “Our aunt. She may be able to help, or at least know who to find for help.”_

_“My father,” Guinevere so rarely spoke of the family she had born into that everyone's curious anxiety turned its attention to her, a focused thing rather than a wild animal, “would also know how to deal with rogue sorcerers.”_

_“Right,” Bedivere remembered, “You are Roman.” Guinevere nodded._

_“I will go to find my aunt,” Mordred said._

_“You will go with Guinevere,” Agrivane corrected him. Mordred tried to say something, but Agrivane continued, “You are the only heir to Camelot and we all know Merlin has tried to kill you once. I want you to be as far away from Camelot as possible when this comes to a head.”_

_Mordred shut his mouth and nodded once, a sharp thing that conveyed his displeasure well._

_“I will go find my aunt,” Agrivane said._

_“I will go with you,” Caradoc said, “It will be safer, in pairs at least.”_

_“If one goes down, there's another to carry the message,” Bedivere agreed._

_“If he does find us,” Lancelot looked around the room, “if he does find Joyous Garde, I want everyone to be far, far away. The less he finds the better we have a chance at surprising him.”_

“Did you?” Gawain asked, “Surprise him, I mean.”

“I have a feeling whatever hell I am being dragged through with you will tell you soon enough,” Lancelot grimaced.

**XXX**

_Lancelot watched them all go, Agrivane and Caradoc back north, Mordred and Guinevere to the Southeast, Kay and Bedivere and Bors leading the castle's residents and surrounding towns to somewhere that was, hopefully, safer. Lancelot did not ask where they were headed, figuring the less he knew the better._

_He felt his heart hurt in a way he had not felt since returning to Camelot after Galehaut's death, the sharp sense of loss fresh again._

_He knelt in front of Galehaut's tomb and prayed._

_“I loved you,” he said, “Love you, still, thought I fear you would not accept me for what I have done, for how my heart has betrayed the both of us. Still, I hope you will forgive me, both for what I have done and what I still must do,” Lancelot let his tears fall, “Watch our Home, Gale, and watch it well as its last keeper.”_

_He did not know how long he knelt there, waiting to see if more words would come, before he rose to his feet, kissed the head of the tomb, and went for what he knew would be the longest walk of his life._

Gawain shivered so violently it caught Lancelot's attention.

“I take it back,” Gawain said as soon as he noticed Lancelot's attention on him, “I think I would have indeed rather been burned to death than...whatever I am about to see.”

_Lancelot was walking along the edge of a cliff, a storm coming on fast, winds dangerous and the first drops of rain stinging his face._

_He could feel it, the magic forcing the storm into existence. It would only be a matter of time before Merlin found him._

_He waited, feet on the edge, back to the nothingness that dropped into the furious seas._

_Merlin seemed to appear from nothing, just in front of him._

_“You,” Merlin roared, “Who are you? What are you?”_

_“I am Lancelot,” Lancelot tried not to show his fear, as if not showing it would keep him from feeling it in the first place, “Champion to the King and sworn to protect that which he stands for until my last breath.”_

_Merlin snarled and took a charge at Lancelot, who offered Merlin a small, resigned smile._

_“You will get nothing from me,” Lancelot said. There was something in his statement, perhaps certainty, perhaps hubris, perhaps a type of serenity that made Merlin stop in his tracks._

_“I will get everything from you,” Merlin laughed, resuming his charge but at a pace much closer to a walk, giving Lancelot time to reply, “I will find where every last traitor is hiding, I will flush them out, I will-”_

_Lancelot heard no more of what Merlin had to say, letting the wind finally knock him off the edge of the cliff._

“Oh my gods,” Gawain gasped, “Oh my gods, no, you...”

Lancelot did not respond, not wanting to miss what happened next.

_Lancelot closed his eyes, let the feeling of the wind and sting of the rain engulf him._

_He hit the water back first, the air forced out of his lungs on impact._

_As he sank into the darkness, a gentle light came closer and closer until it held his form tight._

_“Oh my sweet boy,” the only mother he had ever known murmured into his hair, “Oh my sweet, sweet boy I am so, so sorry.”_

**XXXI**  
Undeserving

Lancelot let out a howl of anguish and sank to his knees. There was nothing in front of him anymore besides darkness, nothing beside him besides more of the same. 

“Is this my fate?” Lancelot demanded answers from the void that surrounded him, “Is this how I began and ended, dead in the water?”

He let out another howl, one of rage this time, then a third of mourning. He mourned the parents he never met, he mourned the Arthur he knew, he mourned Galehaut, he mourned the son he never got to be a father to, he mourned Camelot.

He mourned never having found the home he first sought out to find.

“Oh my sweet child,” his mother said, her light coming into focus.

“Why?” Lancelot cried, “Why me? I was never strong enough, never brave enough, never good enough. I never could have stopped him, not Arthur, not Merlin,” a sob so violent he felt he might vomit, the irony of that level of feeling after death completely lost on him, “Why?”

“You did more than any normal man could have done,” she knelt down in front of him and placed one gentle hand on his face.

“I failed,” Lancelot held her hand against his cheek, terrified is she removed it, he would never feel it again, “I failed, mom.”

“You did not,” she sighed, “and while I wish there had been another end, and perhaps one day there will be, you did not fail – me or Arthur or Galehaut or Galahad or Camelot.”

“How can you say such thing,” Lancelot said between broken sobs, “I failed,” he repeated.

“Come with me, by boy,” she asked of him, “Please?”

**XXXII**

Lancelot followed his mother from the darkness to a field of light, then followed her again through a different, more soul-gnawing darkness into a less bright but still light-filled arena scattered with human-shaped beings.

The first thing he truly recognized was Gawain's face.

“You're here,” Lancelot blinked a few times.

“Thanks to you,” Gawain looked both relieved and furious, “Do you know how many people I had to walk through that until I **learned the lesson** I was supposed to learn at the Green Chapel?”

Lancelot made a rapid-fire series of sounds that were probably supposed to be at least one question.

“That there is always something bigger than you,” said the man beside Gawain, “That there are things more important than the self.”

“Yo got that from me?” Lancelot managed words this time, though they were near an octave higher than usual. Gawain nodded. “And wait. Wait,” Lancelot's voice was closer to normal this time, “You. You're. Holy fuck.”

“Indeed,” Gawain said with a gentle chuckle, both eyebrows raised.

“Nope,” Lancelot crossed his arms, “I do not want to know, thanks.” Gawain's chuckle turned into an honest laugh.

“You have more to see,” Gawain told him, “but I promise, it'll be better than...than that.”

Lancelot nodded, pretending to understand and fully convinced anything would be better than what he had just gone through.

**XXXIII**

Lancelot felt the moss give under his feet, felt the damp earth on the soles of his feet. He took a deep breath and allowed the air to fill his lungs.

“Am I still dead?” Lancelot asked.

“Yes and no,” his mother shrugged, “You are in Avalon.”

He knew that word, had heard of the place before, of Avalon. It was a place for heroes to rest, to wait until they were called upon again.

“Me?” Lancelot squeaked.

“You,” she nodded, “I cannot stay long, but please, if you need me, call my Name.”

“Okay,” Lancelot turned to face her. She gave him one last hug before vanishing into the air.

Lancelot sighed and started walking, an activity he had assumed would cease after death. The forest seemed to stretch on endlessly, the sun never changing position in the skies, the fog never lifting but also never completely obscuring his line of sight. His feet, despite their bareness, did not hurt or feel pricked no matter if it was moss or rocks or sticks he stepped on.

“There you are!” a far-away voice that made him freeze mid-stride called from somewhere to his left, “We all felt your arrival but you are a hard one to track down.”

“Galahad?” Lancelot hoped he was not wrong about the voice.

“It's me,” Galahad finally came into view at a run. He stopped just shy of Lancelot, his expression excited, such a far cry from the reserved young man Lancelot had known in life.

“My son...” Lancelot reached a tentative hand towards Galahad's shoulders, as if he may reach out to find nothing was there.

“Da,” the edges of Galahad's eyes pricked with tears. Lancelot took the leap of faith and finally, finally embraced his son.

Lancelot made a strangled sound as Galahad returned the embrace. When they both pulled back, tears had made tracks on both of their faces.

“Galehaut has told me so much about you,” Galahad wiped his own tears with the back of his hand, “Come on,” he took his father by the hand and took off at a run.

For perhaps the first time in his existence, Lancelot did not follow but ran beside someone.


End file.
